Boys By Nine Year Old Girls
by SamCyberCat
Summary: The girls were hopeless at deciding what they wanted without Ran to guide them. Fubuki, however, knew that what he wanted was different to Ran. References to Ryo/Fubuki and Ryo/Ran.


Notes – For the gx_100. Set pre-GX, presuming that Fubuki and Ran went to the same school. Also, I am not a child-psychologist so the facts in this may be inaccurate.

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Nine was that age when children started to become awkward.

Well, not so much ibecome/i awkward as start to realise that there are things in life that are awkward. Suddenly they start to notice that smearing pudding on the walls is not only a silly thing to do but it's also a little embarrassing. While a few years before there would have been no second thought about pudding and putting it on the walls.

Of course there is margin for the development of each individual child, but it was generally accepted that by the age of nine each child in the class had some conscious thought about what they should or shouldn't do.

Because of this nine was generally the age when boys and girls split into gender groups. In earlier years boys and girls would hang around with each other, but for the current class the boys stayed with the boys while the girls stayed with the girls.

There was one exception to this.

Fubuki hung around with the girls. It was viewed as odd by the staff but even at the age to recognise something awkward the children were overruled by habit. Fubuki had always hung around with the girls. It had been true for so long that neither of the gender groups wanted to fix it. The girls enjoyed his company too much to send him away and the boys made no effort to try to take him back.

So at the break he sat down with them in the school park, as always, talking about various subjects. Today's topic was boys.

The topic had interested Fubuki because a year earlier it had yielded the result "boys are icky", but now it seemed that the girls were regarding boys as being less icky than they first thought. The boys in their class would always be icky of course, however, it now seemed that there were other boys in the world who weren't icky.

They discussed at length the sorts of boys who looked good, the scrapings of conversations they'd heard their older sisters talk about on the phone to their boyfriends, how they'd want a boy to give them presents and how one of them had even bought one of those glossy pink magazines with pictures of smiling boys on the cover.

But they were all spoken about briefly, as if this was not only unknown territory but dangerous territory that they would get in trouble for getting involved with.

There was the sound of a tongue clicking from behind them and the gaggle of young girls, with Fubuki, turned around.

Ran was much regarded as being the unofficial leader of the group. She was taller than all of them, and if there was ever a fight with the boys than it would be Ran that would be turned to so it could be sorted out. One look at her showed that she was not shy of the realm of teenagers. Her face was plastered with heavy makeup, her heels were high and her skirt was short. Some of the girls even said she was developing, but Fubuki didn't know what this meant - the girls were smart enough to not include him in isome/i conversations.

A lot of the girls thought Ran was annoying, but Fubuki liked her. He admired the way she spoke out and never particularly agreed with what the group said just for the sake of not making waves. Ran was the waves. It seemed that right now she was determined to point this out.

"What do you babies think you're talking about?" She scoffed, shaking her head in a way that caused her heavy hoop earrings to jingle.

"We're talking about boys. Not that you'd know about that," said one of the braver girls, to the general murmur of agreement from the group.

A humph sound was made from Ran, who stuck her nose in the air and said, "It's clear from listening to you that you don't know anything about them. You talk about boys as if they're all the same. Have any of you even consider what type of boy you want?" There was a general silence in the area that allowed for Ran to continue, "If you just say you want a boy then you could end up with a snotty-nosed one like those guys playing on the jungle gym over there."

This caused a great deal of gasping from the group, who gathered closer to Ran, asking her to tell them how they could get the boys that they wanted.

She seemed eager to inform them on how they should live their lives and so began, "Well you should want a real boy like the ones who are on TV. And to get one of those you can't hide in the corner or they'll never see you. You've got to look attractive like I do, so all the boys will fall for your charms. When I pick out a husband he will be the best of the best, not some second-rate."

There was much chatter from the girls, who's mothers would probably soon find that make-up was to be added to their Christmas lists.

This got a grin from Ran. They knew that she was right. It was just unfortunate for her that in years to come the attitude that got her regarded as they most realistic of the group would then get her labelled as the most deluded. As her face went from one sheep to another her eyes lay on Fubuki. He was not gossiping like the rest of the girls, but instead looking thoughtfully at nothing in particular. Of course he was excluded from the discussion of boys on account of being a boy. But this wasn't enough for Ran.

"What sort of boy would you want Fubuki?" she asked sharply.

The other girls got in before him by saying, "Don't be stupid Ran, he's a boy. He doesn't want a boyfriend."

"I told you there were different types of boys!" shouted Ran, causing those who spoke against her to wither, "Fubuki is not like the boys over there, so I was asking him."

She looked back at Fubuki, and the others looked at him too, though Fubuki was still staring into space.

Just before the frame of time that a preschooler's attention would run out was up he said, "It's all about balance really. I don't just want a guy because he looks pretty, I want one that can do the things that I can't. And maybe I could do the things that he can't. That would be the best for me."

His mind flickered briefly to the blue-haired boy he saw while walking to school sometimes, but before he could reflect on this his attention was stirred back to the concerned chatter of the girls.

"You wanted Fubuki to be one of us, and you now see that he is," Ran told the group, as if this settled the fact that Fubuki would rather have a boyfriend than a girlfriend. But while they were sloping off into smaller groups to talk Ran went over to Fubuki and said, "You really put a lot of thought into it, huh? You want a boy to balance you out and I want one who's perfect. At least with that sort of difference in needs we can be sure we'll never be competing over the same boy."


End file.
